Twelve-Year-Old Euthanized in the Netherlands: Not a First

By Wesley J. Smith

Thursday, June 25, 2026

 

The media is (properly) reporting that a Dutch doctor euthanized — i.e. killed — a sick twelve-year-old child (illness not reported). It is a “first” under a new Dutch law that allows euthanasia for children ages one to twelve. From the story in The Independent:

 

In a letter to parliament, Dutch health minister Sophie Hermans said that the child had died last year but did not clarify their age, date of death or the illness that they suffered, according to broadcaster NOS.

 

The law in the Netherlands was changed in 2024 to extend euthanasia to children under the age of 12 to allow them to “die with dignity” if there was no route to escape extremely severe pain or suffering.

 

The media always spout the “no route to escape” idea, which is often a false premise.

 

But that point aside, this pediatric case is hardly the first we have seen in recent years. As the story notes, doctors commit legal infanticide when babies are born with terminal illnesses or serious disabilities. This is allowed under the “Groningen Protocol,” a bureaucratic checklist to determine which babies are killable.

 

After the Holocaust, infanticide was considered such an egregious human rights atrocity that some German doctors were hanged for having killed disabled babies. Their excuse? Killing these babies was compassionate and for the benefit of the babies as well as their parents and the Reich. (See, for example, the story of Baby Knauer, as reported by Robert Jay Lifton in The Nazi Doctors.)

 

That defense didn’t fly. But it might these days, as Dutch doctors do the same thing and it is depicted benignly as “death with dignity.”

 

Dutch teenagers have also been euthanized over the years, including some with mental illnesses.

 

Beyond the Netherlands, several children have been euthanized in Belgium in recent years, including a nine- and an eleven-year-old, as well as a 17-year-old and 16-year-old girl with brain cancer who was put into a 36-hour coma by doctors so she could be examined prior to donating her organs.

 

In Canada, the euthanasia of minors remains illegal. But powerful forces in the medical establishment and in politics want that to change.

 

If lethal jabs or prescribed poison are normalized and transformed into legitimate forms of “medical treatment,” for how long can children and babies be excluded logically from eligibility?

 

In the end, the issue isn’t whether children are euthanized so much as whether doctors and nurse practitioners should be permitted under the law to kill patients or assist their suicides regardless of the patients’ age. If we decide that they should, it will have profound ramifications — and not just for adults.